"Can I help you?"

"Yes. I'm wondering why you don't have gods. Does your magic interfere?"

"Uh. I don't know? The magic doesn't interfere with belief in gods, ours just might be hands-off. I really don't know why our planets are different like that."

"Could you become a god as easily as I could?"

"...I could. Convince people to worship me, that wouldn't make me a god?"

"Come walk with me, I want to talk with you privately. The tide's still going out, we have time."

...Okay then.

They follow.

"I want to know how your magic interacts with gods. If it's kept your home from getting any, is that just because using it prevents you from becoming one, or does your magic make gods mortal just by happening around them? It's not safe to test but it's important to know."

"Back up to the 'becoming one' part. That's possible here?"

"Yes, it is. I don't know what's wrong with you or your home that prevents it."

...There's not quite not a single damn thing wrong with their world, there's a lotta things gone wrong, but - an outsider doesn't get to call them wrong.

"Unless somebody's - themself-ness - was 'deity,' I don't see how it'd happen in the first place, and you'd need a mountain's worth of craft to change that much. How do you become a god?"

"They say by walking fearlessly out of mortality and into either death or godhood. They say by being indestructible and destroyed. I don't find what they say very clear, personally. How would you make someone a deity whose themself-ness was already that way? What would it mean for someone to be that way and not be a god yet?"

"People - aren't born their full selves, and can grow away from the people they fundamentally are. Person-craft is supposed to help people be their full selves, and can give magic that's - fit to the person, like my language tattoo. So if someone was - not themselves unless they were a deity, you could maybe give them deity-magic? But. I don't think that's ever actually happened, and there've been - something like a hundred billion people in history?"

"And you have reasons for not wanting to enhance people here. There are no safe tests but it's so important to know what you can do. If, say, Forth could use you to destroy the other gods and rule unopposed..."

"...What does Forth do - command - whatever, and why is 'destroying the other gods' a plan?"

"They compete for followers to drain of energy."

"And all the gods except Forth do that?"

"Of course not. Forth is no exception. She also drains people's energy, she just also helps keep us safe and doesn't usually kidnap and torture anyone."

'Usually.' Great.

Of course the actual literal gods are assholes. Why expect anything different.

"I'd be really hesitant to make a god more themselves, that has way more potential to go wrong than stumbling my way through body-paint."

"But can you destroy one?"

"I could make a weapon very itself maybe, but trying to change a thing into something it's not is probably how you get apocalypse beasts."

"What about protecting people? If someone's self is not being tortured, can you make them impossible to torture?"

"Um. Maybe? But - it's not affecting the world about you, it's - I might could help someone become a person with an impossible-to-torture-and-traumatize mind, if that's the sort of person they were - person-crafting in general makes people awfully durable, 'harder to kill' is purt easy. I ain't a theorist, but Lord willing and the creek don't rise, a weapon'd turn out better. But I ain't got a dog in y'all's fight, I ain't ever talked to nobody from this world 'cept y'all, I don't know what y'all'd do with a weapon after the gods are dead, or if the other gods're like you say."

"Can you make a house only allow in the influence of people the homeowner chooses to allow in?"

"...That'd be a thing. If the influence was magical that might could work. Dunno if'n I can keep people out out."